Elton John Not Returning To ‘The Lion King’ Remake With New Music: Disney Didn’t Ask

It’s tough to think of ‘The Lion King’ without thinking of Elton John — but apparently the remake won’t feature new music from the legend. We spoke with him exclusively before his annual Oscars party on Feb. 26, and he told us that he had no idea they were even making it.

“We didn’t even know it was being made,” Elton John, 69, told HollywoodLife.com before the 25th Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation’s Academy Awards Viewing Party in Los Angeles on Feb. 26. “So Disney hasn’t even told us about it — That is how good Disney are!”

Elton’s husband David Furnsih added that the answer was “we don’t know,” but Elton also added, “They (Disney) are the worst by the way!”

Well, that seems a little intense. Elton is responsible for the music of the show and the film in 1994, and it became one of the highest-grossing animated films ever, making $968.5 million. The live-action reboot is currently on trend, and the remake will follow 2014’s Maleficent, 2015’s Cinderella, and the soon to be released, Beauty & the Beast. We don’t know much yet about the live action remake film!

Jon Favreau will be directing the remake, Donald Glover will star Simba, while James Earl Jones will return to reprise the role of Mufasa. No other casting has been announced at this time, and we don’t yet know if any other names will be returning from the original cast.

(Favreau is currently mounting a new, hyperreal version of The Lion King, with Donald Glover as Simba and James Earl Jones returning as Mufasa.)

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Favreau, hard at work on The Lion King, won’t just be referencing the original animated film. He’ll also travel to New York to meet with the team behind the Broadway production, and incorporate their ideas into the new film.

Title: The Lion King Category: Feature Film Genre: Adventure / Comedy / Drama Shoot Date: May, 2017 Location: Los Angeles, CA Story: Set in the African Savannah, the story told of a young lion named Simba who loses his father Mufasa thanks to his evil uncle Scar, and is cast out into far reaches of the wilderness. Years later, he returns to reclaim his throne.

Grammy Award-winning artist and actress Beyonce (Dreamgirls) is the frontrunner to voice the role of Nala in Disney‘s upcoming live-action remake of The Lion King, according to Variety. Though she hasn’t accepted the role yet, she is reportedly director Jon Favreau’s first choice to play the lion, first voiced by Moira Kelly (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me) in the 1994 animated classic, with Sally Dworsky (The Prince of Egypt) providing the singing voice.

The Lion King is the latest in a line of live-action versions of Disney animated classics which include Beauty and the Beast and The Jungle Book. The Lion King cast includes Donald Glover (Community, Atlanta) as the young lion Simba and James Earl Jones (Star Wars) as Mufasa. Jones, of course, did the voice of Mufasa in the 1994 animated film. Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) was the voice of the adult Simba, with Joseph Williams (the band Toto) doing the singing.

In addition to her extensive music career, Beyonce has been critically lauded for her role in the musical film Dreamgirls. She’s also appeared in Austin Powers in Goldmember as Foxxy Cleopatra, Epic where she voiced Queen Tara, and the thriller Obsessed.

ComingSoon.net recently spoke to Favreau about his work on The Jungle Book, during which he told us that he was planning to use VR technology on The Lion King. He explained that there is so much innovation going in for video games since they’re made for consumers. He said that not as much is being done in terms of behind-the-scenes technology for film.

How Disney Is Approaching The Lion King In Live-Action, According To Jon Favreau

Director Jon Favreau is following up his incredibly successful Disney adaptation of The Jungle Book, with an even more beloved Disney classic, The Lion King. Recently, the director spoke about his approach to the popular story. Favreau seems to clearly understand that he's dealing with material that fans are passionate about, and he says that in order to properly adapt it, he has to be equally passionate. According to the director...

"When you're directing, you have to love [what you're making]. You have to love it to the point of obsession. I have to live, breathe, sleep it, dream it. If I'm going to do my best work, I need to be completely immersed... you look at the material and you get inspired, and then try to update it for our time. With the Disney stuff, people know even more... With Lion King, people really know [the original], and they grew up with it and it has emotional impact. I think about what I remember about The Lion King?"

Jon Favreau's comments during the Tribeca Film Festival (via Entertainment Weekly) are similar to something Josh Gad told me about Beauty and the Beast prior to its release. Because both of those films were newer, and stories that current movie fans had grown up with, the responsibility to do it "right" was much greater. The Lion King is one of Disney animation's biggest movies ever and as such the pressure to make a live-action version that lives up to its predecessor may be even greater than it was for Beauty and the Beast. Favreau's method for making sure that he does it right is apparently to simply immerse himself in the material.

The director said that he did something similar with The Jungle Book where he thought hard about what aspects of the Disney original he really remembered, knowing that those would be the moments that his film also had to have. Then, he was able to figure out how to incorporate those beats into his version of the story.

That doesn't mean, however, that Jon Favreau will simply be recreating everything from the animated original. While he talks about focusing on the film's iconic moments, he also talks about where he has the latitude to change things. The idea here seems to be that if the overall experience is still the one that people expect, the few places where things get changed up can actually make the experience better because people do still like to be surprised now and then. It seems like a strong formula. Most of the negative criticism that Beauty and the Beast received was from sources that felt the live-action version played it too safe and didn't do enough that was new with the material. If The Lion King is able to find the right balance, it could be an even bigger hit.

Dal sito The Hollywood Reporter:Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner in Talks to Voice Timon and Pumbaa in New 'Lion King'

The duo joins Donald Glover as Simba and James Earl Jones as Mufasa.

Jon Favreau's Lion King may have found its Hakuna Matata. Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner are in talks to voice Pumbaa and Timon, respectively.

Donald Glover is set to star as Simba, while James Earl Jones will reprise his role from the 1994 animation as Mufasa.

Jeff Nathanson (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) wrote the script for the live-action adaptation, which is being produced by Favreau and Jeffrey Silver.

In the original animation, Nathan Lane voiced the loud-mouth meerkat and Ernie Sabella tackled the kindly warthog.

Rogen, who has voiced animated characters in films including Kung Fu Panda, Monsters vs. Aliens and last year's Sausage Party, which he also co-wrote and produced, will next be seen in James Franco's The Disaster Artist. He is also set to star opposite Charlize Theron in the political comedy Flarsky. He is repped by UTA, Principal Entertainment and Felker Toczek.

Eichner is best known as the aggressively inquisitive host of Billy on the Street, which earned him a Daytime Emmy. He also stars in the Hulu series Difficult People and has been seen on Parks and Recreation and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. He is repped by UTA and 3 Arts.

These castings come on the heels of more big news for the Lion King production. Today, Disney gave the project a release date of July 19, 2019, along with several other upcoming productions including Indiana Jones, Frozen 2 and Star Wars: Episode IX.

Will Disney show art or provide news of the live-action remakes of these animated classics, which recently started production? Jon Favreau, fresh off The Jungle Book, is making The Lion King (schedule for a July 19, 2019 release) in Los Angeles, again using virtual production techniques by reteaming with Jungle Book’s Oscar winning VFX supervisor Rob Legato and lead VFX house MPC. Announced this week, John Oliver will join the cast as Zazu. Castmembers also include Donald Glover (Simba), Seth Rogen (Pumbaa) and James Earl Jones (Mufasa). Meanwhile, Tim Burton has started production on Dumbo in the U.K., reteaming with collaborators such as four-time Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood. The cast includes Eva Green, Michael Keaton, Colin Farrell and Danny DeVito.

But the most anticipated film in this category is The Lion King and Disney fan John Favreau was not about to disappoint 8,000 of his fellow card carrying D23 members. He explained that the film is very early in production, but the first question he asked when he was put on the project was "When is D23?" so he could get something ready. We were treated to Circle of Life fully animated to look live action and set to the song from the original film. It was absolutely breathtaking and we all turned into puddles when baby Simba sneezed.

Disney debuted its first glimpse at footage from the upcoming “live-action” adaptation of the beloved animated feature at D23, Disney’s biennial fan convention in Anaheim, California on Saturday.

As previously reported, the film will star Donald Glover as young cub-turned-king Simba and James Earl Jones reprising his role from the 1994 classic as Mufasa. Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner play Timon and Pumbaa, with John Oliver newly announced as Zazu.

Jon Favreau was tapped to direct the film after mastering the technology that brought animated animals into the relative real world with The Jungle Book. Much has been made of the idea that the “live-action” film features, yes, animated characters, and while Favreau didn’t elaborate on the difference between his process for The Lion King compared to his approach to Jungle Book (which featured a human character), the director did introduce the footage at D23 with something of an acknowledgment over fans’ interest in the approach. “We know how important this is. People want to understand what our approach is, what we’re doing, and as soon as I found out we were going to be doing this film, my first question was, when’s D23?” (It was at the convention that Favreau first showed off a peek at Jungle Book.)

The footage itself was a doozy, opening with the African sun rising over the Savannah while the familiar opening chant blares out to mark the beginning of “Circle of Life.” From there, audiences saw rhinoceroses, antelopes, cranes, zebras, and elephants (with birds and bugs hitching a ride on their tusks) answering the royal call and trotting over to Pride Rock. The action basically mirrors the 1994 film’s opening, rendered almost identically in the style of The Jungle Book, but to stunning degree; the iconic wide shot of Pride Rock zooms out to show an ever vaster panorama that essentially looks like the IMAX museum documentary version of Mufasa’s domain.

Rafiki then pops up, fully realized in the realistic animation style but with the unmistakable features of the cartoon baboon. Baby Simba rests in his mother’s arms when Rafiki anoints him, smudging oil across his forehead, drawing an aw-inducing sneeze from the little cub. Rafiki holds up the baby, the animals rise and bow, and Elton John’s “Circle of Life” reaches it symphonic peak before the familiar title card drops.

Following the footage (which received some of the loudest applause of the live-action panel), Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn commented “I visit a lot of sets… this is the first time, I thought to myself, when I went to visit Jon making the film, I had a hard time understanding how you do this. And yet, they do. And I do know that Jon and his team will create something that is completely respectful and faithful to The Lion King you already know and love, just as he did with The Jungle Book.”